Live: Latest tallies show some potential surprises in Cork’s northside local electoral areas

Latest – 12.05pm CORK CITY NORTH EAST & CORK CITY NORTH WEST

THE most recent northside tallies for the local elections show some old reliables doing well and some potential surprises.

A tally of the boxes opened shows that in Cork City North West, where there are 43 boxes, some 39 have been tallied, or 91%.

The boxes tallied show Fianna Fáil on 28.67%, Sinn Féin on 27.42%, Others on 15.54%, Fine Gael on 12.06%, and People Before Profit-Solidarity on 6.4%.

Tallies show the Green Party is on 3.65%, the Social Democrats on 3.33%, and Labour on 2.92%.

In Cork City North West, former lord mayor Tony Fitzgerald is leading on 16.7%, Fine Gael’s Damien Boylan is on 12.06%, Fianna Fáil’s Dr John Sheehan is on 11.97% and Sinn Féin’s Kenneth Collins is on 11.25%. His party colleague, Michelle Gould, is tallying at 9.82%, and People Before Profit-Solidarity’s Brian McCarthy is on 6.4%.

Sinn Féin’s Mick Nugent is on 6.35%, just ahead of Ross Lahive of the Irish People who is on 6.31%.

In Cork City North East, of 48 boxes, 32 have been tallied, or 67%.

The boxes tallied show that Others are on 35.91%, Fine Gael is on 14.99%, Labour on 14.7%, and Fianna Fáil is on 9.57%.

Sinn Féin is on 9.18%, the Green Party on 6.81%, People Before Profit-Solidarity on 5.44%, and the Social Democrats on 3.4%.

In Cork City North East, Kenneth O’Flynn is topping the tally at 22.64%, while John Maher of the Labour Party is on 14.7%, former lord mayor Joe Kavanagh of Fine Gael is on 11.2%, and Ted Tynan of the Workers’ Party is on 8.44%.

Sinn Féin’s Christa Daley is on 7.14%, Oliver Moran of the Green Party is on 6.81%, Margaret McDonnell of Fianna Fáil is on 6.33%, Edith Busteed of People Before Profit-Solidarity is on 5.44%, Imelda Daly of Fine Gael is on 3.79%, and Sinead Halpin of the Social Democrats is on 3.4%.

11.40am CORK CITY SOUTH CENTRAL, CORK CITY SOUTH EAST & CORK CITY SOUTH WEST

THE earliest southside tallies for the local elections show a strong performance for lord mayors past and present.

Tallies are not considered scientific and come with a large grain of salt, but can be helpful in showing early patterns of voting.

On the northside, tallies show the total number of boxes opened, while the southside has gone with percentages rather than a figure.

A tally of the boxes opened shows that in Cork City South Central, some 19% of votes have been tallied.

The boxes tallied show Fine Gael’s Shane O’Callaghan is on 22.8%, the Green Party’s Dan Boyle is on 9%, Pádraig Rice of the Social Democrats is on 8.1%, Fianna Fáil’s David Boyle is on 7.8%, Fianna Fáil’s Seán Martin is on 7.8%, Anna Daly of Aontu is on 6.5% and Independent candidate William O’Brien is 6.5%, the Labour Party’s Dr Lekha Menon Margassery is on 5.6%, Independent candidate Paudie Dineen is on 5.5% and Sinn Féin’s Fiona Kerins is at 5.5%.

In Cork City South East, 12.3% of votes have been tallied.

Former lord mayor Terry Shannon of Fianna Fáil is tallying on 17%, his party colleague and fellow former lord mayor Mary Rose Desmond is on 13.3%, while outgoing Lord Mayor, Independent councillor Kieran McCarthy is on 12.1%.

Another former lord mayor, Fine Gael’s Des Cahill, is on 9.3%, while the Green Party’s Honore Kampegni’s 7.1%.

Fine Gael’s Barry O’Brien is on 6.9%, while Peter Horgan of the Labour Party is on 6.2%, as is Michelle Cowhey Shahid, and Fine Gael’s Deirdre Forde, another former lord mayor is on 6%.

In Cork City South West, a percentage of votes tallied was not available.

Former lord mayor Colm Kelleher is on a whopping 42.3%, with Fine Gael’s Garret Kelleher 10.7%, Sinn Féin’s Joe Lynch on 10.1%, Fine Gael’s Gary O’Brien on 8.1%, Laura Harmon of the Labour Party is on 4.7% and Ciaran McCarthy of the Social Democrats is on 4%.

11am – CORK CITY NORTH EAST & CORK CITY NORTH WEST

THE earliest northside tallies for the local elections show an impressive performance by Sinn Féin in Cork City North West, with first-time candidate Michelle Gould just ahead of her colleague Kenneth Collins, while in Cork City North East, former lord mayor Joe Kavanagh is leading the pack ahead of Ken O’Flynn of Independent Ireland and John Maher of the Labour Party.

Tallies are considered more of an art than a science, and come with an obvious health warning, but they can be helpful in showing early patterns of voting.

On the northside, a tally of the boxes opened shows that in Cork City North West, where there are 43 boxes, some 13 have been tallied, or 30%.

The boxes tallied show Sinn Féin on 32.43%, Fianna Fáil on 20.62%, Others on 19.53%, and People Before Profit-Solidarity on 10.12%.

Tallies show the Green Party is on 4.97%, the Social Democrats on 4.44%, Fine Gael on 3.99%, and Labour on 3.91%.

In Cork City North West, Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gould is tallying at 14.41%, followed by her party colleague Kenneth Collins on 13.43%.

Fianna Fáil’s Tony Fitzgerald is on 13.43%, and People Before Profit-Solidarity’s Brian McCarthy is on 10.12%.

Fianna Fáil’s Dr John Sheehan is on 8.16%, Ross Lahive of the Irish People is on 8.01%, and Independent Stephen Morrissey is on 7.11%.

Louise Jordan of the Green Party is on 4.97%, Sinn Féin’s Mick Nugent is on 4.59%, Saoirse Mackin of the Social Democrats is on 4.44%, and Finian Toomey of Aontu is on 4.40%.

Damian Boylan of Fine Gael is on 3.99% and James Joy of the Labour Party is on 3.91%.

In Cork City North East, of 48 boxes, 10 have been tallied, or 21%.

The boxes tallied show that Others are on 27.38%, Fine Gael is on 23.67%, Labour on 11.31%, and Fianna Fáil is on 10.26%.

Tallies show that People Before Profit-Solidarity on 6.36%, Sinn Fein on 5.96%, the Green Party on 4.97%, and the Social Democrats on 4.85%.

In Cork City North East, Fine Gael’s Joe Kavanagh is on 20.67%, Ken O’Flynn of Independent Ireland is on 15.07%, John Maher of the Labour Party is on 11.31% and Ted Tynan of the Workers’ Party is on 9.46%.

Edith Busteed of People Before Profit-Solidarity is on 6.36%, Margaret McDonnell of Fianna Fáil is on 6.3%, Christa Daley of Sinn Féin is on 4.95%, Sinead Halpin of the Social Democrats is on 4.85%, Shane Ryan of Fianna Fáil is on 3.95%, Imelda Daly of Fine Gael is on 3%, and Anita Ward of the Irish People is on 1.05%.

Sinn Féin’s Mandy O’Leary Hegarty is on 1%, Martin Condon, non-party, is on 0.8%, and Tamasin MacCarthy Morrogh, non-party, is on 0.4%.

9am

The vote counting process is to begin later today in the local election.

A day after voters headed to the polls in three highly anticipated elections, the ballot boxes were opened at 9am – in Cork this took place at Nemo Rangers GAA club – before counting gets under way later today.

Early tallies are expected to start coming in from around 10am.

People voted to elect a swathe of new councillors as well as picking candidates to send to the European Parliament and, for the first time, Limerick voters will be directly electing a mayor to represent them locally.

The ballot papers for the local government elections will be sorted and counted first, before the papers in the European and Limerick mayoral elections are counted on Sunday and Monday respectively.

The count staff in centres across the nation will separate the votes – which is expected to take some hours – before counting them.

The ballot papers are separated based on first preference votes, with spoilt votes separated from the piles.

Spoilt votes are those which are deemed illegible because there are multiple first preference votes or they have been defaced with messages.

To win a seat in a local authority, candidates have to meet the required quota of votes, which is calculated by dividing the total valid poll by one more than the number of available seats, and then adding one.

There are 31 local government bodies in Ireland. Each county and city council is divided into local electoral areas with a specified number of council seats to be filled in the election.

In total, there are 166 electoral areas in Ireland and each of them elects a number of councillors. The number of councillors to be elected nationally is 949.

These representatives are tasked with making policy decisions at local level including on planning and community development.

At the same time, EU citizens registered in Ireland were eligible to vote for 14 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) across three varied constituencies: Dublin, South, and Midlands-North-West.

The MEPs are responsible for debating EU-wide legislation and working on the budget for the bloc.

The local and European elections are held every five years.

Ballots in the local elections will be sorted straight away on Saturday but results in the European election cannot be declared until after all EU states have finished polling – which will not happen until late on Sunday night. Counting in the mayoral election is expected to begin on Monday.

Even then, Ireland uses a system of proportional representation which allows voters to rank every candidate in each race by order of preference.

Candidates must reach a certain quota of votes in order to be deemed elected.

In the likely event that not enough candidates are above this threshold following the first count, hopefuls with the least amount of votes are eliminated and their votes are redistributed based on the further preferences on the ballot papers. The same occurs when a candidate is elected with a “surplus” of votes.

It means the paper ballots in each election, which are filled out with pencil or pens, are sorted and counted multiple times by hand.

The entire process is expected to last days.